It is industry practice for domestic and international shipping and freight (transportation) companies to utilize methods for maximizing the amount of product (load) that can be loaded into a transportation vehicle such as, for example, a truck, an airplane, a train, a shipping container or other means of transportation. This allows the transportation companies to maximize profits by ensuring that the maximum amount of product is placed in the truck, airplane, train, etc. for transportation from one location to another location.
To maximize the load that can be transported, transportation companies use complex algorithms such as, for example, cubing algorithms, to ensure that all available space in the vehicle is used to its maximum capacity. In its simplest form, cubing is the act of placing smaller cubes (e.g., packages) into a large cube (e.g., a container for transport) in order to best fit all the cubes into the larger cube. Since packages can vary in size, a number of algorithms are known to be employed to create a best fit within the transportation space (larger cube), all of which are limited to the volume, dimensions and weight of the packages. Presently, cubing operations do not taken into account, nor are they concerned with the actual product and associated costs of manufacturing, sales data, etc. of the product or other business considerations, since such information is directly related to maximizing the transportation load in the vehicle.
Since most cubing applications center around the transportation industry, the amount of product to be transported is a function of the limitations of capacity of the transportation vehicle such as, for example, a truck. Thus, the cubing algorithms take into account the volume and dimensions of the packages, in addition to the mass of the packages. For example, cubing algorithms take into account the weight to volume ratio of the freight. This allows for the calculation to take into account the absolute capacity of the vehicle which is used to transport the product.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.